MARGARET CATLEY-CARLSON: BIO Chair, Global Water Partnership, Stockholm, Sweden Chair of the Global Water Partnership, the Board of the Crop Diversity Trust, and the International Advisory Committee for Group Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux. Ms. Catley-Carlson is a member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board, the Rosenberg Forum, and of the Council of Advisors  of the World Food Prize.  She serves on the Boards of the Biblioteca Alexandrina, IMWI (the International Center for Water Resource Management);the IFDC (Fertilizer Management)  and IIED - the International Institute for Environment and Development.  She has been chair of the ICARDA and CABI Boards and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, Vice Chair of the IDRC Board and a commissioner of Water for the 21st Century.  She was President of the Canadian International Development Agency 1983-89; Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF in New York 1981-1983; President of the Population Council in New York 1993-98; and Deputy Minister of the Department of Health and Welfare of Canada 1989-92. Ms. Catley-Carlson is an Officer of the Order of Canada.

SUSTAINABLE WATER SUPPLY IN THE 21st CENTURY by MARGARET CATLEY-CARLSON: 01/9/2007 (MaximsNews.com, U.N.)

UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com@ U.N./ - 01 September 2007: Mrs. Catley-Carlson delivered this speech as she prepares to step down as Chair of the Global Water Partnership:

 Abstract  

The world is mostly made of water.  But, only 2.5% of world’s water is fresh water, with less than 1% available for use.  We draw down about fully 56% of that 1% of water that is actually accessible to us.  Drylands, by definition, enjoy a much less proportion of this resource than more privileged areas.  Water resources are central to food security, to the health of the environment, to our enjoyment of nature, to energy production, to transport, and often to our national conceptions of us. Because of a combination of population growth, pollution, and increasing per person use, there are about 450 million people in 29 countries facing water shortage, and by 2025 about 2.7 billion, or 1/3 of the expected world population, will live in regions facing severe water scarcity.      

Agriculture is the biggest water using activity and is responsible for 70 to 80 % of a country’s water consumption. It warrants careful attention. Billions of dollars are spent in subsidies to farmers throughout the world but they are allocated without any consideration to water problems, thus creating artificially a water crisis, which will manifest itself as a food security crisis. The water problem is as much a financial problem as a water problem. There is no solution to the water problem without some overhaul of the way agriculture is subsidized, water as an industrial or agricultural input is priced, local authorities are vested with the responsibility to provide water to their inhabitants and good managers, and sustainable financial resources are allocated to them.   

Introduction  

The UN Secretary General asks, in a year end broadcast, if the next wars will be water wars. “Water is the 21^st Century Gold” avers a Middle Eastern research group.  We see TV images of draught where rains fail, water tables drop and then crops wither, roots die, lands erode and soil blows away.  Many countries experience unprecedented flooding.  We know that more and more rivers – major rivers -- dry up before they reach the sea, and fertile lands are ruined by salt.  And we know that somehow connected to this is the daily reality of 6 thousand water-related deaths, and of 2 ½ billion people suffering the indignities of being without sanitation facilities, and fully half that number suffering the health and livelihood effects of not having access to clean water.  What is going on?  Doesn’t it still rain?  How do these issues fit together?  

The World of Water  

Here is the world of water in brief.   The world is mostly made of water.  But within this watery world, only 2.5% of world’s water is fresh water, with less than 1% available for use.  We draw down about fully 56% of that 1% of water that is actually accessible to us.   Water use sextupled when population doubled since the 1960’s (i.e. added 3 billion); what will be the situation in 2050 when we add the next 2-3 billion?  Sextupling isn’t possible – we’re already over the half way mark (Shiklomanov, 1997).  

Water resources comprise the totality of rainfall, rivers, lakes, aquifers, and groundwater.  Drylands, by definition, enjoy a great less of this resource than more privileged areas.  This Conference is all about how to apply science and knowledge to alleviating the difficulties and hardship of life with less water. Water resources are central to food security, to the health of the environment, to our enjoyment of nature, to energy production, to transport – (especially in this country) and often to our national conceptions of ourselves.    Water resources are managed – or should be – by public policy:  by Finance and Trade Ministers through tariff policies, by Natural resource ministries and agricultural ministries, by environmental regulations such as the European Framework Directive, by resource inventories and surveys, monitoring, trying to integrate the various uses made of water by various parts of society.  Determinants of who gets what relate to the relative political power of the agricultural sector, the mining sector, the energy producers, the environmentalists.  

Most of the Millennium Development Goals - reduced malnutrition, decreasing the number of those in poverty, improving the environment - will not be reached without improved water resource management.  The Johannesburg Earth Summit (2002) passed a specific directive calling for all countries rich and poor, water scarce and water plentiful to develop integrated water resources management (IWRM) and water efficiency plans by 2005.  IWRM  is an approach  “which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without comprising  sustainability of vital ecosystems (Global Water Partnership, 2000).  

The aspect of water that is most immediate to everyone, dryland or other, is water supply – or drinking water supply – that takes but a small part of water use, generally about 7 or 8%.   Water supply, often with sanitation and water treatment, is managed by municipal managers, water engineers, sanitation specialists.   The decisions about who gets water supply or who gets sanitation are primarily about financial and policy priority decisions.

The two are related:  bad water treatment pollutes drinking water supplies.  But, for example, whether the citizens of a country have adequate drinking water is much more closely related to the income level of that society than simple water availability.   This is logical.  In an increasingly urban world, water supply is related to costly urban infrastructure which must be financed.    Poorest countries have the greatest challenge, even those with ample water supplies.  

Both of these have changed a great deal in the last decades because of the following:  

1.      Huge population increase has reduced the absolute amount available per person for these purposes.

2.      Humankind has invented about 100,000 chemicals to help us with food and industry and daily life; we also use the streams and rivers around us to dispose of these and agricultural and human waste products.  Ninety percent of the South’s waste water goes untreated into the streams and oceans with consequences for the downstream and the reefs and coastal regions.   Ergo, there is less water available for each of us, and often it is polluted - occasionally to the point where it cannot be used, often to the point where it causes illness.

3.      The impact is not just on humans - About one quarter of the fresh water fish species are endangered.     Fully 50% of the global wetlands disappeared in the 20^th century (Schuyt and Brander, 2004).  Mangrove swamps are being pulled out.  Aquifer levels are falling, not everywhere, but in far too many places.  

So, this combination of population growth, pollution, increasing per person use means that there are about 450 million people in 29 countries facing water shortage, and by 2025 about 2.7 billion or 1/3 of the expected world population will live in regions facing severe water scarcity (Rosegrant et al., 2002).  

Because of the enormous temporal and special variability in water, this hits some areas much harder than others.  This means that some parts of India receive 90% of their water in five days of rain, perhaps spread over two intervals a year.  If they cannot store this water they will lose it – and have no more for months to come.   To add even more complexity, 263 of the world’s river basins are shared by two or more nations, and about 40% of the global population lives in these shared basins.   

The impact on people’s lives and livelihoods depends on who they are and where they are.  Poor people suffer most when water is unavailable, they suffer in particular from the absence or poor working of municipal services and poor people suffer disproportionately from the health impacts of dangerous or low water quality and quantity.   

It would in fact be difficult to exaggerate the impact that the lack of clean drinking water has on the lives of the poor.   Close to half the population of the developing world suffering at any one time suffer from diarrhea, ascarids, guinea worm, hookworm, and shistosomiasis.  A well designed water system reduces the incidence of shistosomiasis by close to 80% (UN Millennium Project, 2005).  There are 4 billion cases of diarrhea yearly which cause 2.2 million deaths.  Fully 6 million are blind from trachoma – a disease which could be largely prevented if there were enough water to wash the face, and if the habit of doing so could be taught and learned.   The naturally occurring arsenic in Asian groundwater has diminished quality of life for hundreds of thousands of the millions who lived because they no longer faced cholera (UN Millennium Project, 2005).    

Cholera means both loss of life but also loss of livelihood.   Chile took years to recover from the losses suffered in the fruit and vegetable export earnings after their 1990s cholera scare, and it actually cost infinitely more than would have improved water systems.  Poor water impoverishes the poor in other ways.  About 73 million working days are lost in India to problems associated with poor water quality and the health impact, with $600m lost in paying treatment costs and in the cost of lost production.  A staggering 40 billion working hours in Africa are lost to carrying water.  This is women’s work and if women cannot do it their daughters will come out of school and fetch water (UN Millennium Project, 2005).   

The per person count is what counts.  If we look at one of the most unstable areas of the world, we see a truly disquieting water picture.   In the Middle East and North Africa region the population doubled from 1970 to 2001.  In 1960 there were 3,500 cubic meters of water per capita available to be used for all purposes – food, industry, personal use – for all residents; by 2025 that will be down to 600 cubic meters per person, or a six fold decrease.   Irrigated agriculture uses a hefty 85% of the water in the region.   This part of the world is now 60% urban.  The scarcity will intensify for agriculturalists and urban alike.   The Arabian Peninsula, Jordan , Palestine , Israel and Libya consume more water than annual renewable supply, with Egypt , Sudan , Morocco , Tunisia and Syria – close behind.  Jordanians have but 163 cubic meters per person per year, Yemen 133.   How will prosperity – or peace - come in these circumstances?  

By common consent, the problems of water are problems of water management.    

First, some water resource issues:

• According to the World Bank estimates, Australia and Ethiopia and Western USA all have about the same rainfall and climate but where the USA and Australia have around 5000 m³ per head of water storage capacity, Ethiopia has only 50 m³, and Africa and the Middle East as a whole only 1000 m³.  Each USA citizen has fully 100 times as much stored for him or her vis a vis each Ethiopian.  So how can Ethiopia grow more food, offer conditions under which industry might be established and meet people’s needs for water.

• China has about 50% of its agriculture under irrigation – with as much as 70% of that water lost to wasteful methods.

• In China it takes 25-50 tons of water to produce a ton of steel as against 5 tons of water taken by Germany , Japan and US to make 1 ton of steel.

• The Aswan high dam is built in where summer temperatures reach 44 degrees C.  Were it further upstream, the evaporation losses would be cut substantially.

• Saudi Arabia uses fossil water (i.e. laid down eons ago, not replenishable) for agriculture; the practice has been cut back.

• India and China between them probably pump about twice the Nile River ’s worth of water more than rainfall will replenish from underground sources for irrigated agriculture – often the electricity and the water are both free.

• Household consumption: In North American we dam rivers to store water, pipe it, filter it, add chemicals to it, preserve its purity and then flush more than a third of it down the toilet  (about 8% worldwide).

·        Food security.  Water scarcity is a threat to food security.  Although only 17% of agriculture is irrigated, this irrigated land accounts for more than 40% of all agricultural production, and it accounts for about 80% of all the water we humans use.     With both upsides and downsides, we have fed an additional 3 billion people since the mid point of the last century through intensifying agricultural production, primarily through Green Revolution techniques and substantially but not uniquely through irrigation.  Had this not been done, the burgeoning world would have fed itself by extensive means, i.e. clearing more forests, more tropical lands, denuding more hillsides.   And much of the world’s water supply to agriculture is under threat.  

·        Irrigation investments declined continuously since 1980 and have in any case virtually not touched Africa .   There is a combination of relevant factors:  agricultural water storage involves dams, now rarely financed by concessional funding sources;  past projects are perceived to have performed poorly (there are hardly ever water charges or budget appropriations to keep the systems in good working order); irrigation projects are more costly than education or social projects; irrigation investments were crowded out by lending in structural adjustment in 1980s and later focus on environment; irrigation (Seckler et al., 1997).  These declines help the urban poor, but not the rural poor who have to make money to buy anything, including food.  Some 70% of the poor are still rural.  

·        Floods and disasters.  Hotter air holds more water than cold air.   As temperatures rise, more water accumulates.  Rain becomes torrential, in more places, more often.  It is not imaginary that there are more named Hurricanes – there are.   Climate variability is having an enormous impact on water management and will do so even more in the future.   According to the International Climate Change Partnership (ICCP) reports the flood damage claims since 1950 have risen from $39.6 to $607 US billion with the curve still climbing sharply.   Loss of lives in flooding has dramatically decreased in the industrialized world as early warning measures and long term disaster prevention measures take hold – helped by skyrocketing insurance premiums.   Loss of lives has however increased dramatically in many places in the developing world as burgeoning populations build in floodplains, and less than well organized societies try to cope with a stream of weather events increasing in frequency and violence in the tropical regions.  There are welcome exceptions – Bangladesh has reduced the lives lost to flooding as they have applied the experience of past inundations.  

·        Population increase is the biggest threat to water security.   Although population growth rates have decreased dramatically, the human race will increase by another 2 to 2.5 billion before population levels stabilize.   With higher levels of development come higher demands on water – for energy, for food, for personal use.   Water use increased by a factor of 6 when the world’s population doubled, by adding 3 billion since the mid point of the last century.   

Not-Yet Threats  

Water wars. It is absolutely the case that two Middle Eastern cities armed themselves and went to war directly over water (Wolf, 2002).   But it was 4500 years ago and in the years since, the participants have often been edgy, but actual violence only ensues on the local level.  In 1980, armies were mobilized.   Shots have been fired: Egypt , Ethiopia , Sudan , Jordan in 60s.  Landmines have been put down in Uzbekistan , and a dam blown up in Oregon .   But generally and amazingly, nations have found more to cooperate about with water than to fight over.  The reality is a fairly rich tradition of Transboundary Cooperation with India continuing to pay Pakistan for the costs of building and operating dams which Pakistan continued to build and operate – right through several periods of Indo-Pakistan hostilities.   The Mekong River treaty held, with some difficulties, right through the Vietnam War.  The Jordan River treaty is more observed than it is violated, though it is violated.  

A study of the last 50 years shows that 2/3 of all events involving water issues between two or more states have in fact been cooperative, with acute violence being rare.  Where there is violence, the water issue is usually as subset of other difficult issues.  USA intelligence reports suggest that shortages have often stimulated cooperative arrangements for sharing scarcity (US National Intelligence Council, 2000). As countries come up against tighter and tighter limits, conflict may increase.    Wolff’s Axiom says that “the likelihood of conflict rises as the rate of change within the basin exceeds the institutional capacity to change” (Wolf et al., 2003).  In other words, the strong linkages, history, technical capacity and managerial competence of the Canada/USA International Joint Commission suggest that it will help our two countries to find solutions to new challenges such as deformed fish, zebra mussels, declining Great Lakes Water levels.   In the Aral Sea , given the weak linkages between the regional countries, it is much less likely that solutions will emerge easily.   

Water-related violence very much exists in the world of today but the most intense conflicts are intrastate, intercommunity, and intervillage.  Pastoralists and planters do come to blows.  The poor are at the bottom – and when we wonder about water and violence, we should think of the women at the well who resort to blows to maintain their position in the line up – day after day after day. But it is unlikely that we will be as drawn to their bitter daily conflict as we will to those where armies line up and command camera attention.  

The international community tried to forestall tensions over shared waters.  The Nile River Treaty tries to create a win-win situation through finding agreement on and financing for an impressive range of development projects for all of the countries in the region.   The price tag is very steep but wars would undoubtedly cost more on all measurement scales.  

The new transboundary issues will be complex.  They are unlikely to be about water availability alone.  There are rich mixes of issues that will plague the 260 shared river basin countries:  water dumping in times of flood risk; existence of toxic dumps near water sources; inadequate industrial protection; salinity and agricultural wastes in the stream; building dams and infrastructure without consultation.  Climate variability will add to the complexity of this mix.  

Promises 

Labels: United Nations, U.N., 

~~~~~ MaximsNews.com, An Independent Voice from the U.N., provides commentary and analysis from leading world figures: King Abdullah II (Jordan), HRH Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein (Jordan), Sir Brian Urquhart, Hans Blix, Amb. Richard Holbrooke, Anwar Ibrahim, Bianca Jagger, Dr. Nafis Sadik, Shashi Tharoor, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Noeleen Heyzer, Kerry Kennedy, Ian Williams, Stephen Schlesinger, Sen. Timothy E. Wirth, Marc Morial, Amb. Jayantha Dhanapala (Sri Lanka), Amb. Pierre Schori (Sweden), Amb. William H. Luers, Susan Roosevelt Weld, Rory Kennedy, Mehri Madarshahi, J. Michael Adams, Gloria Feldt, Jeffrey Laurenti, Rodney D. Smith, Ashley Bommer, Rory O'Connor, Genevieve Stamper, Max Stamper and others.

REACH THE WORLD'S MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE   FOR BANNER ADS, contact:  ElsieHillman@MaximsNews.com TO SUBMIT YOUR PRESS RELEASES, contact: TomHerkins@MaximsNews.com   Advertisement

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MaximsNews Network® LLC is a Global News Network reaching over 30,000 in the International Community. It is associated with MediaChannel.org and Globalvision News Network, global news and media information services with more than 350 news affiliates in 135 countries. MaximsNews®LLC is in partnership with the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund. Established in 1999.  

The views expressed are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of MaximsNews® LLC.

MaximsNews.com U.N. ® LLC News for the United Nations and the International Community -   www.MaximsNews.com | MaximsNews@MaximsNews.com | Please contact us about Republishing: Syndication@MaximsNews.com ©Copyrights 1999 - 2007, MaximsNews® LLC. All rights reserved.